Musicians from Scituate and Taunton are in tune with new albums and a joint tour

Thursday

Feb 6, 2014 at 9:00 AMFeb 7, 2014 at 9:05 AM

It's a match made in honky-tonk heaven: Girls Guns and Glory, the ever-more assured South Shore-rooted quartet, with Sarah Borges, who is the pride of Taunton.

Chad BerndtsonFor The Patriot Ledger

For fans of Boston-area bands and country-rock lovers of all stripes, it's a match made in honky-tonk heaven: Girls Guns and Glory, the ever-more assured South Shore-rooted quartet, with Sarah Borges, who is the pride of Taunton and, over the past year, once again a fixture in local clubs.

Both are releasing long-awaited albums and playing together throughout much of 2014, including a high-profile hometown stand at The Sinclair in Cambridge this Friday. Special guests are expected, and as a bonus, local legends the Swinging Steaks will open the night.

"I think what's interesting is that I went on a break for a few years, and Girls Guns and Glory is in exactly the same spot I was when I stopped," Borges told the Patriot Ledger in a recent joint interview with Girls frontman Ward Hayden. "So it's so great to be able to jump back in with them. We're good matches in terms of duets – Ward and I love to sing together – and the bands just play well together. Plus, we each do well in different markets so we saw an opportunity to help each other out."

"It's definitely a great pairing," Hayden added. "We've done shows together before but this makes sense just because both of our albums are coming out, we can connect through a live show, and The Sinclair especially is a great time to get people out to see us."

Borges and Hayden have known each other for years as part of the Boston area's exceptionally tight-knit roots music scene, and have played in numerous combinations with many of the same musicians.

Borges sang on a previous Girls Guns and Glory album, and has sat in with the band on several occasions, most recently for Girls' New Year's Eve show in Cambridge and for a string of out-of-town dates in January, including at New York's Rodeo Bar.

The format for the co-bills in most locations has been a set of straight-up Girls Guns and Glory followed by a set of the band backing Borges. The Sinclair show will be an exception, however; Borges is assembling a group specific to the occasion that will feature three of the scene's most ubiquitous players: guitarist and Ryan Montbleau alumnus Lyle Brewer, who's also Borges' husband, drummer Mike Piehl and bassist Kimon Kirk.

No Time Like The Present

In an interview with The Patriot Ledger last May, Borges described how her former band – the nationally-noticed Broken Singles – had decided to pack up its tent in 2010, resigned to the realities of tour-band financials. Borges and Brewer were married later that year and gave birth to son Elliott, now 2, in the summer of 2011.

Borges in 2012 and 2013 began playing more frequently again, often solo or with different groups of players, and also raised $15,000 as part of a crowd-funding campaign for new album Radio Sweetheart. Produced by Los Lobos mainstay Steve Berlin, the album is finally being released after more than a year in limbo. And in a nod to her own determined spirit, Borges gave up trying to find a label and distribution and has decided to put the album out herself.

"I cashed out my 401k. I'm paying for it," she said. "It's time to recoup the expenses and put this thing out. I mean, I don't have any other marketable skills – I'm not going to be a lawyer or a garbage man at this stage of the game. I used to curse the state of the music business, but what I want to do is to get people out to my shows and if they have a response to CDs and stuff, well, it's a lot cheaper to get stuff out through Spotify and iTunes than it is to stuff padded envelopes and mail them."

Borges praises her fans and many of the promoters and bookers who helped her get going in the first place for keeping her spirits up.

"It's been very affirming," she said. "I reached out to everyone and I was worried I wasn't relevant anymore. But they're still with me. People really love it. We all take care of each other in this scene, really."

"One of the great injustices in the music industry is the fact that Sarah Borges is not internationally famous," said David DeLuca, the Weymouth-bred local rock mainstay who plays with Highway Ghosts and has recorded with both Borges and Hayden. "She has an amazing voice. I have always loved the 'old time rock 'n' roll' tone to her voice, mixed with a very modern intensity and power. Fortunately for all of us, Sarah appears to have found a way to balance her family life and music career."

More Glory

After a few years of fits and starts following its initial fast rise on the local scene, Girls Guns and Glory at last has momentum: a stable lineup, a growing fan base in the U.S. and Europe, and a more finely tuned live show than ever before.

GGG's new album, "Good Luck," continues the band's evolution toward roots-oriented rock 'n' roll first heard on 2011's "Sweet Nothings" – think Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly – while preserving the twangy country sounds that launched it. "Luck" adds to an already-formidable discography that's pushed Girls Guns and Glory into the vanguard of local bands and made a splash among country rock audiences craving good old-fashioned musicianship and sturdy songwriting.

"We had 50 million potential titles, and we decided to call it 'Good Luck.' I think it's the only thing we could agree on," laughs Hayden. "We wound up making the record because we were supposed to go to Europe again last year and the booking agent over there – who's become a friend of ours – got sick and we ended up canceling the whole tour. We took a month off and we weren't making any money, so I called [producer] Eric Ambel in Brooklyn and said, can we make this work?"

To hear Hayden tell it, the "Good Luck" title captures both the earnestness and the mischief of the band, which tends to come out in equal measures when they play live.

"I like to look at it as both serious and kind – to literally wish someone good luck – but also as a bit sarcastic. You know, 'Good luck, man, ha,'" Hayden says. "That's us."

Girls Guns and Glory went through a few lineups in its formative period but the current roster – Hayden, guitarist/banjoist Chris Hersch, electric/upright bassist and pianist Paul Dilley and drummer/percussionist Josh Kiggans – has been in place for about two years now and Hayden's confident he's found his guys.

"I feel like I played with every musician in Boston," Hayden said. "We had hard years because we just kept going through players. So to have a steady lineup – and to have commitment to do this as a lifestyle, full-time – is everything to how we're growing."

"They're a testament to perseverance," said DeLuca. "They rose very quickly in the local scene but like all bands, they soon learned it is much more difficult to achieve national and international success. [But] Ward has kept GGG going strong and they're continuing to build a solid fan base wherever they go."

Staying Put

Both Borges and Hayden say they've been asked a lot over the years about moving from Boston – whether they'd make more of a splash, for example, in traditional country-rock and roots or "Americana" hotbeds like Nashville or Austin.

"It's a common thing to think about," Hayden said. "And you do see some musicians like us move from Boston and go to Nashville and make it, and others don't. But we all kind of made this our home. It would be hard to uproot now, and I've never been sure we need to."

"I still hear people who can't get their heads around Boston having this thriving roots music scene," Borges adds. "Guys like Girls Guns & Glory, they came to these traditions honestly. It's not like they moved here from the south. They love this kind of music, we all do, and I've never understood why that has to be a regional thing only."

Borges and Hayden will play co-bills off and on in the next few months, and are also looking at West Coast and other national dates. They're also planning to write and record together – and lucky audiences may get a taste of an original duet or two.

"We're wreaking maximum havoc when we're playing together," Borges laughs. "We're going to make the show as fun as possible and get these people revved up."